JAKARTA - The pretext may have been
demands for the closure of Freeport Indonesia's
Grasberg copper and gold mine, 500 kilometers away
across Papua's rugged central highlands. But while
focusing on the world's most profitable mine
attracted international attention, the true
motivation for last week's bloody demonstrations
in Papua's provincial capital, Jayapura, ran much
deeper.

The student-led protests, in which
four policemen, an air force officer and a
protester were beaten and stoned to death,

underline once again the
need for the Indonesian government to do a lot
more to address the remote territory's grievances,
which range from an unfair distribution of the
wealth gleaned from its natural resources to
political double-dealing in Jakarta and a
deep-rooted disrespect for Papuan culture.

Analysts say the
demonstrations last Thursday had been planned for
months by two radical groups allegedly linked to
the territory's fizzling independence movement.
Those plans appear to have pre-dated last month's
unrelated blockade of the Grasberg mine itself,
where police clashed
with several hundred illegal miners panning for
gold in the mine tailings, or waste rock, just
below Freeport's mill.

As it was, the
trouble with the miners, which dates back several
years, served as the pretext for a March 14 attack
on the four-star Sheraton Hotel near the lowlands
town of Timika. That attack has been blamed on
members of the Association of Mountain Papua
Students (AMPS), an offshoot of the newly formed
Front Pepera Papua Barat and one of the two
activist groups believed to be behind the violence
in Jayapura two days later. The groups are
relatively new, and little is known about them
apart from their links with the independence
movement.

President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono has made it clear he has no intention of
bowing to protesters and closing the Grasberg
mine, which last year earned the central
government US$1.1 billion in taxes and royalties.
Hit hard by the $5 billion Bre-X gold scam in 1997
and by a controversial ongoing pollution case
against the US mining company Newmont, Indonesia's
mining industry is already in the doldrums and
struggling to attract new investment.

Yudhoyono also pointedly warned Jakarta's
political elite against becoming embroiled in the
Papua situation, a reference to opposition figures
and other critics who have been seeking to turn
public opinion against Freeport and US oil company
ExxonMobil. Only last week, Exxon was given the
go-ahead to act as the operator of Java's new Cepu
oilfield after a prolonged dispute with the
state-run Pertamina oil company, in which
Yudhoyono personally intervened.

Never far
from the surface, and often used as a potent
weapon by Jakarta power-holders to pressure the
government for personal gain, Indonesian
nationalism in recent years has become
increasingly linked to US actions around the
world, particularly those perceived to be an
attack on Islam. Recent protests by Islamic
activists included both Freeport and Exxon in a
long shopping list of complaints.

Political manipulation may also be at
play. Defense Minister Sudarsono said this week
that there seemed to be "integrated coordination"
connecting separate demonstrations in the past few
days at Cepu and the burning this Sunday of a
Newmont Mining Corp exploration camp, 60km from
the company's copper and gold mine on the island
of Sumbawa. It was not clear whether he was
referring to actions of opposition politicians or
radical environmentalists.

In Papua,
however, a different form of nationalism is
ascendant, born out of the region's incorporation
into the Indonesian republic in a controversial
United Nations-sanctioned vote of "free choice" in
1969. Jakarta's inept handling of its easternmost
province and a barely disguised disdain for the
Papuans, who ethnically are distinct from the
ruling Javanese, have only exacerbated a problem
that now seems to have attracted a new and perhaps
more radical generation of activists whose
ultimate objective appears to be Papua's
independence.

Front Pepera, one of the new
radical groups, is reputedly led by Hans Gebze, an
Australian-educated member of the dominant Dani
highland tribe who has strong links with
Australian leftist groups. Crisis Group
International (CGI) analyst Francesa Lawe-Davies
said it is difficult to determine what the
organization stands for, but noted: "We haven't
seen this level of coordination for several
years."

The latest disturbances come after
a year in which Freeport contributed five times as
much to central government coffers as ever before.
Since 1992, royalties and taxes have averaged an
annual $180 million, with the company adding more
to the economy in the form of salaries, local
procurements for food and other supplies, and
community-development and local-government
programs.

The problem, of course, lies in
how much actually goes to Papua - an issue that
rests solely with the central government. Of this
year's $1.1 billion, Papua is guaranteed 80% of
the royalties, or a paltry $65 million. Even then,
instead of being sent directly to Jayapura, the
money must first go to the notoriously
tight-fisted Finance Ministry in Jakarta before it
is redistributed.

Last-minute changes to
the 2001 Special Autonomy Law by Jakarta's House
of Representatives denied Papua a share of
corporate taxes, by far the largest chunk of the
annual payments. But as compensation, it is
supposed to receive an additional 2% of the total
grant Jakarta hands out to regional governments
each year. That, according to a recent World Bank
review, amounted to about Rp1.8 trillion ($200
million) in 2005 - to go along with the more than
Rp3 trillion it gets as a normal allocation.

Papuan leaders complain about the slow
disbursal of funds, but Jakarta has a complaint of
its own. Local police and prosecutors, working
under the supervision of the Anti-Corruption
Commission (KPK), are currently investigating
widespread corruption in the governor's office and
several of the province's 19 regencies. Jakarta is
also scratching its head about the whereabouts of
$4 million it recently provided in electoral
support funds to Papuan officials. As in Aceh,
Indonesia's other special autonomy region, Papua
has not always been well served by its own elite.

Up the coast from Freeport, BP is
developing the 24-trillion-cubic-foot Tangguh gas
field, which will eventually provide the major
source of income for the newly created Indonesian
province of West Irian Jaya. Although revenues
will only begin to flow after a four-year
cost-recovery period, the company is expected to
contribute as much as $200 million a year to the
province when Tangguh reaches full production
capacity in 2016.

Under a complicated
formula that also applies to Aceh, 70% of post-tax
revenue will be divided up between the provincial
administration in Sorong (40%), the three
districts affected by the project (30%) and the
central government (30%). Now, $200 million would
appear to be far more than the threadbare West
Irian Jaya administration could absorb without
slippage.

If finances are a problem, the
political situation in Papua is a minefield of
Jakarta's own making. While the rebel Free Papua
Movement's (OPM) stuttering bow-and-arrow
insurgency hardly poses a serious challenge to
Indonesian security forces, the threat of
spreading civic unrest could well be real if the
government continues to treat the Papuans as less
than equals.

The latest recipe for rancor
has been the March 10 local elections, which in
effect cemented in place West Irian Jaya as a
separate province and ignored the entreaties of
moderate Papuan leaders to give the idea more
time. The passage of a 1999 bill dividing Papua
into three provinces - Papua, Central Irian Jaya
and West Irian Jaya - has long been a catalyst for
discontent, particularly among the elite in
Jayapura who stand to lose the most.

In
2001, president Abdurrahman Wahid's administration
enacted the Special Autonomy Law, which states
that any territorial division has to be approved
by a 42-member Papuan People's Council (MRP). But
avowed pluralist Wahid was subsequently replaced
by avowed nationalist Megawati Sukarnoputri, who
proceeded to issue a presidential decree in early
2003 creating West Irian Jaya - covering all of
Papua's so-called Bird's Head region.

Legal experts say the special-autonomy
legislation trumps the 1999 bill, but it has one
glaring loophole: there is nothing that
specifically says it supersedes previous laws.
Former ambassador Sabam Siagian, a member of the
Papua Forum, is also critical of the fact that
Megawati's home affairs minister, retired army
general Hary Subarno, appears to have deliberately
delayed the formation of the people's council.

Indonesia's Constitutional Court last year
gave the green light to the creation of West Irian
Jaya, but the whole episode and the decision to go
ahead with the elections is seen as another case
of Jakarta riding roughshod over Papua's newly won
autonomous status. "What's so damaging is that
they have been ignored," Siagian said. "The deeper
problem is that Jakarta doesn't have the attention
span to deal with Papua."

Under the best
of circumstances, covering events in Papua in any
objective way is difficult - even on the ground.
But the government and its myriad opposition
groups don't make it any easier, first by denying
access to foreign journalists and applying a
selective process to other dispassionate
observers, and also by leveling an unending stream
of human-rights-violation allegations at
Indonesian security forces that have not been
independently verified.

Take the case of
43 Papuans who sailed in January from the coastal
town of Merauke to Australia's Cape York Peninsula
in an outrigger canoe and are now seeking
political asylum. Leaving aside the veracity of
their claims of torture and repression by
Indonesian soldiers, the episode illustrates the
problem of trying to get a clear picture of what
is going on in Indonesia's largest and
least-populated territory.

Papuan and
Western human-rights groups claim the Indonesian
military is still engaged in genocide on a scale
previously seen in East Timor, but Jakarta-based
Western diplomats say they have seen nothing to
support those allegations. Many Australians betray
a bias by referring to the territory as West
Papua, the same name used by the independence
movement. Although the province was called Irian
Jaya during president Suharto's rule, it was
subsequently changed by Wahid's administration to
Papua - not West Papua.

East Timor has
clearly left an indelible mark on the Australian
psyche. While that is understandable given its
life-saving role after the bloody events of 1999
and Indonesia's refusal to punish those
responsible for the violence, there is a sense in
Indonesia that certain Australian human-rights
groups are now rubbing their hands and thinking
they can help to accomplish independence for Papua
as well.

This month the Australian
ambassador to the United States, former spy chief
Dennis Richardson, asked that same question in a
speech criticizing the motives of those fighting
for Papua's independence. "Perhaps those critics
cling to an Indonesia which no longer exists, and
for them to accept the Indonesia of today and to
reinforce the positive developments in Indonesia
is to deprive them of their raison d'etre,"
he said.

In a country such as Indonesia
whose intelligence services often prefer to deal
more in conspiracy theories than fact, it feeds
into the long-held belief that Australia is out to
dismember its vast northern neighbor. That may
seem implausible, but for diehard nationalists -
particularly in the military and the House of
Representatives - it is no laughing matter and
frequently arises in public statements.

The government, on the other hand, has
failed to provide any genuine reassurances that it
has improved its treatment of the Papuans - yet
another example of Indonesia's lack of attention
to public relations and to international opinion.
Critics say closing the province off to Western
journalists and independent human-rights monitors,
as has been the case for the past three years,
inevitably leaves the impression that Jakarta has
something to hide.

Minister Sudarsono, a
political scientist who has been trying to reform
the military, makes it clear that the government's
closed-door policy won't change any time soon.
What makes the government nervous, he explained
recently, is that foreign reporters will act as a
magnet for disaffected Papuan groups and only
worsen an already difficult, though hardly crisis,
situation.

The Indonesian military has an
unenviable reputation to live down, but its more
recent behavior in Aceh shows it may be making
important progress on the human-rights front.
Western diplomats say the last verified case of
serious rights abuse in Papua occurred two years
ago, in response to a separatist raid on an armory
in the central-highlands town of Wamena.

Observers also note that during the latest
disturbances in Jayapura and Timika, the
paramilitary Police Mobile Brigade, a notoriously
trigger-happy force that goes by the unfortunate
acronym of "Brimob", appears to have acted with
considerable restraint. Although four members of
the security forces died and another 19 were
wounded in the Jayapura incident, there is no
evidence so far that they killed any protesters.

Thousands of students, however, have taken
to the hills fearing reprisals in the wake of the
recent violence. Witnesses say that the police
also appear to have made tactical mistakes in
dealing with the protesters.

Sudarsono
acknowledged there have been past incidents of
brutality and rape committed by government troops,
but he said there is a tendency to insinuate that
they were systemic and institutionally inspired.
The same bias was obvious in the coverage of the
August 2002 ambush that killed two American
schoolteachers in the now-infamous Tamika ambush,
with some Western newspapers alleging - without
supporting evidence - that it had been planned by
the top military leadership.

One of the
biggest issues internationally is the government's
military strength in Papua. Military analysts,
relying on a variety of sources, now say there are
11,000 troops spread across the largely roadless
territory - not 15,000 as has been widely
reported. That is still substantially more than
was originally thought, an indication the army may
have beefed up under-strength battalions already
in the province, particularly those stationed
close to the Papua New Guinea border. There are
currently more soldiers per citizen in Papua than
anywhere else in Indonesia - though Papua is a
massive territory to defend.

Human-rights
groups, who use the high-end figure, claim
reinforcements are continuing to be sent in.
Jakarta, on the other hand, insists that they are
deliberately misreading normal yearly rotations.
Government officials privately admit that because
most of the troops are based in and around towns,
it leaves the impression the province is
over-militarized.

The government's plan to
base a third Army Strategic Reserve (Kostrad)
division in Sorong, the old oil-mining town that
serves as the West Irian Jaya provincial capital,
won't be realized until 2014, a much longer term
than originally thought. Even then, the division
will be split between Sulawesi and Papua, with the
apparent task of strengthening security across the
entire eastern region. Both existing Kostrad
divisions are based on Java.

All this
conforms with recent moves, precipitated by the
Ambalat territorial dispute with Malaysia over oil
resources, to pay more attention to the country's
territorial integrity. In Papua, for example,
diplomatic sources say that the army is departing
from its previous anti-guerrilla posture and
putting greater emphasis on combined
battalion-level operations that fit better with
its newly defined role as an external defense
force.

Like many countries in Southeast
Asia, Indonesia has dealt poorly with its
minorities. Papua is perhaps the most glaring
example, a vast Melanesian territory whose people
and culture are starkly different from those of
the rest of the archipelago. The Javanese, in
particular, who continue to have a dominant
influence on Indonesian public life, have shown
little patience for the Papuans, their aspirations
or their culture.

It is this unhappy
attitude that the Indonesian government has to
overcome. Sudarsono, a Javanese himself,
understands it well. He told foreign reporters
recently that a lack of respect for Papua's unique
culture ranks alongside economic injustice and
unfair distribution of state income as one of the
biggest problems confronting efforts to bring
about genuine reconciliation.

John
McBeth is a former correspondent with the Far
Eastern Economic Review. He is currently a
Jakarta-based freelance journalist.